Shonda Rhimes reveals the qualities her ideal life partner would have
Although Shonda Rhimes creates some of the dreamiest heartthrobs on TV, she’s still looking for her own Mr. Right, who needs to have one crucial quality: intelligence.
The 56-year-old director — the creator behind the romantic dramas like Grey’s Anatomy and Bridgerton — spoke about being single and what she looks for in a romantic partner during Tuesday’s episode of Craig Melvin’s podcast, Glass Half Full.
“If Shonda Rhimes could write the perfect guy for Shonda Rhimes, what would he be like?” Melvin said. “What would he look like?”
Rhimes said that she hasn’t thought about what her future partner would look like, but she has considered the kind of personality she’d want him to have.
“I think for me the most attractive thing about somebody is them being intelligent, like really smart, and having an opinion about the world. To me, that’s interesting,” she explained. “I don’t care if you’re an activist or in philanthropy, but you have to be somebody who’s involved in the world.”
“If you know anybody, please, you and your wife can set me up,” she told Melvin.
Rhimes revealed that her eldest daughter, Harper, 23, has tried to step in and introduce her to new men.
“I would go on dates, and she would run to the door just as we were leaving and say, ‘Make the magic happen!” Rhimes recalled.
Her other two daughters — Emerson, 12, and Beckett, 11 — aren’t as keen for their mom to go on dates.
“They’re always very upset when I put on makeup and go anywhere. They’re like, ‘What have you done to your face?’” she said. “They’re those kids who like me as me and at home, and they can’t imagine me as a separate person, and I get that. I’m their mom.”
Rhimes adopted her first child, Harper, in 2002, before adopting Emerson 10 years later. She welcomed Beckett via surrogate in 2013.
The screenwriter previously said in a 2015 interview that she isn’t interested in getting married, but she’s had a change of heart over the years.
During an appearance on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast in October, Rhimes confessed that her firm stance against marriage may not be “true anymore.”
“I’ve never been a person who thought about getting married. I was a person who, like I always knew I was gonna be a mom. I’ve always known that,” she said. “Marriage never really entered into it and my parents have this amazing romantic, beautiful marriage and they’ve been married forever, and so I have this great example of what a great marriage is, but I was always like, ‘Eh, eh.’”
Rhimes said that she used to feel like marriage was “really threatening” to her identity, where people were going to see that as her value, rather than her successful career.
Now that she’s “very comfortable” with what she’s accomplished, she doesn’t have that fear anymore.
“I’m completely comfortable with the idea that like I can meet somebody and spend the rest of my life [with] them because I’m not worried that who I am is gonna be taken away from me,” she explained.
